Nice warehouse, we’ll take it! Manchester sees stars as Baltimore hardcore supremos Turnstile smash their biggest UK headline show to date.
If you wanted to track Turnstile’s dizzying trajectory from hardcore hopefuls to a genuine phenomenon, then here are a few numbers for you: 250, 850, 2,500, 10,000. That’s the step up in venue capacity that the Baltimore crew have headlined each time they’ve toured the UK since breaking cover with 2018’s Time & Space. Packing out House Of Vans’ skate tunnel in London back then felt momentous. So too did the GLOW ON-powered bonanza at Manchester’s 2,500-cap O2 Victoria Warehouse. Tonight’s sold-out grandstand for 10,000 fans at Depot Mayfield, though? Now that’s on another level, even more than their headline turns at Outbreak. And as ever when Turnstile tour our shores, anticipation levels are through the roof.
High Vis make a decent case for Turnstile’s ideal opener as they blast into Drop Me Out’s clanging riff. Like the headliners they’re experimental punks fusing raging energy with sprawling melody. Siouxsie And The Banshees-esque guitars shimmer through Walking With Wires, while the pummelling bass and drums anchoring 0151 send the first bodies over the barrier.
The Garden, meanwhile, might also do well opening for Krusty the Clown. You can’t fault the pinballing pair for manic energy and eclecticism, but their restless freewheeling from one idea to another is an acquired and less immediate taste. You can't, though, argue with a song with the brilliant title Horseshit On Route 66.
Cheers and voices rise up as Turnstile take the stage to NEVER ENOUGH’s cosmic wash of synths, and Brendan Yates leads the crowd through the song’s soothing refrain. Daniel Fang stretches, flexes, then counts off the high-hat beat that catapults a small town’s population into the song’s riff avalanche before careening full-pelt into T.L.C. From that point on, Turnstile and their crowd are locked in, two-stepping to the same beat and pushing each other further.
Songs from this year’s NEVER ENOUGH feel huge in this warehouse, given ample space and a willing crowd to luxuriate in their expansive moods. LIGHT DESIGN’s faded grooves are hypnotic, while DULL turns the pit into a pressure cooker as sweaty bodies spin through the band’s frenetic breakdown. A one-two combo of Real Thing and Drop is a welcome throwback to the band’s roots, mashing infectious thrash and hip-hop with hardcore energy, but what’s impressive is how naturally the new songs flow from the old. The same intensity that powers Pushing Me Away’s beatdown also courses through the ferocious gallop of SUNSHOWER, drawing a line from basement shows in Baltimore’s hardcore scene to the cavernous sweatboxes Turnstile find themselves filling now.
“We need you on this one!” Brendan yells into the flagging crowd, rallying them as guitarists Pat McCrory and Meg Mills’ twin axis of heavy riffing firepower launches into SOLE, which evolves from bouncing mayhem into full crowd chanting. Meanwhile, the cosmic disco of SEEIN’ STARS has room to stretch out and shine, complete with sparkling mirrorball. Ingeniously, the extended dance outro of LOOK OUT FOR ME serves as an encore break, a brief respite for aching limbs before the band lead the crowd through a victory lap of MYSTERY and an adrenalised BLACKOUT. That would be enough for most, if it were not for BIRDS. Daniel’s teasing drum fills wind the tension in the crowd to breaking point, only to be unleashed to explosive effect as band and crowd land on its bouncing groove, bodies soaring over the barricade one last time.
As they exit the stage, the backdrop shows camera footage from the crowd. Some are dancing, some are colliding, all sharing a sweaty grin that says the same thing: “I was there.” The magnitude of this show is simply unlike anything you’ve ever seen from a hardcore band before. And the mad thing? It feels like Turnstile are still on their way to bigger things. The sky is the limit for these birds of a feather.
